Let me go, you brought this on yourself! I warned both of you it’s not my fault you didn’t listen—he leaves me no choice! Your father’s identity is something I took to the grave with me, and that’s where it’s going to stay.”
Drew’s eyes grew wide as he realized what I was saying. “She can control you? When were you going to let me in on that little detail?”
“Normally, she can’t—not anymore, I’m starting to lose this battle, Drew! She’s going to try to kill you.”
Echo was delirious and seething with rage and fear. I felt the shift in control, and there was nothing I could do about it. I hadn’t been a spectator in my own skin since I was ten years old. My body bucked and flailed as Echo tried to throw Drew off. With Echo’s conscious taking a dominate seat to my own, she turned my head and sunk my teeth into Drew’s arm. He cursed, and for the first time, I saw just how dangerous he could be when provoked. I saw the feral look in his eyes as he looked down at me.
Through gritted teeth, he said, “I’m sorry, Eden.”
It happened so fast that I barely registered the blow. The next thing I knew there was nothing but black.
Chapter Twenty-One
Moments of Truth
I knew it wasn’t a dream because I could feel the pain like it was my own. Echo’s emotions were a collage of fear, sorrow, shock, and finally, acceptance. She realized she was dying, and nothing in heaven or on earth was going to save her. The sky was a vivid clear midnight blue, and the moon was playing peekaboo with clouds as I lay sprawled on the ground and saw the world through Echo’s eyes.
“No, not again—I don’t want to live through this again!”
Try as she may, Echo couldn’t stop the memory from revealing itself to me once it had begun. The moon’s light was suddenly blocked from my view as a man leaned over me, his long blonde hair and hot wet tears falling across my face. All the fear Echo felt left her as she gazed up into liquid silver eyes. Why was my father here? A chilling revelation hit me like a freight train, and I didn’t want to believe it—My father killed Echo.
The sound of a car had Echo panicking. It was an irrational sense of fear because her life was starting to slip away. “Danny—go, you know what they will think if you are still here when they get here, I’ll be okay,” Echo said with almost the last of her strength.
“But Echo, it wasn’t me,” he swung his gaze behind him and shouted, a sound of raw untethered agony, “How could you, you know how much I love her. She’s dying—our baby is dying.” He glanced back down where Echo was lying, I could see the undeniable love written all over his face. “Echo, please…”
“Danny—GO!”
“Daniel, leave the little bitch there. She’s beneath you anyway, and that child would be a disgrace to the family name, it’s better off dead. We need to go—now,” a low voice said.
“It was an accident—this was not how this was supposed to go,” Danny said to Echo as tears continued to pour down his face.
The other person who was there let loose a sarcastic, heartless chuckle, “No, this is exactly what needed to happen, you’ll thank me someday for cleaning up the mess you made before it could publically humiliate those of us who matter. Now let’s go unless you want to be some serial killer’s bitch in a prison cell.”
He took one last look at Echo, and I could feel the memory starting to shift and pull, but I wasn’t ready to go, I had to see who the other person was—the one who’d shot her. It didn’t matter though, because Echo only had eyes for Danny, she’d never taken her eyes off him in the memory. His eyes turned dark and filled with hatred as he looked up at the headlights that were starting to illuminate the area and then back at whoever had spoken. I felt a tight pressure around Echo’s left hand and then just like that Danny and the pressure were gone. He’d taken off running when the distant sound of sirens joined the growing glow of headlights. The world was fading fast, and I could feel the undeniable pull of whatever memory I would be drug into next. With the last of her strength Echo raised her left hand and what I saw took my breath away. A diamond ring and an undeniable sense of bittersweet encompassed Echo’s last breaths.
“Yes,” was all she said before she stopped fighting with death and let go. That’s when I felt a new memory’s pull yank me toward it. Only there was no next memory. Instead, I bolted upright in my bed and stared into the darkness of my shadow cloaked bedroom. My head was pounding, and my jaw felt like it wasn’t attached. Drew must have walloped the hell out of me. I knew I was going to have a hay day trying to explain the bruise that was more than likely on the side of my face, to my dad. Drew was nowhere to be seen but I wasn’t alone.
I’m sorry, and now that you’ve seen my death, well the last part of it, first hand, you understand why I wouldn’t—why I couldn’t tell you who your father is. If he stayed with me when I was dying in that field, he would have been falsely accused of murder. Even now, after all these years, the result would still be the same if not worse because he didn’t step forward with what he knew. Don’t you see Eden, don’t you understand now—because he was there, he’d be an accomplice to murder—and attempted murder at the very least. But, with no other
